For me it's usually 4-8 days of all-day drinking (starting at 8 in the morning before work, ending just before i shut my eyes at night) followed by 2-4 days of gruelling, sleepless sobriety. Never less than a half-bottle of red wine and a half-bottle of whiskey. Slowly increasing.
(It is the ruined sleep, I find, that causes the biggest challange to the dedicated drinker. This morning as i limped through the office towards the toilets, the earth suddenly jerked around ninety degrees and hit me in the face with the floor! Luckily, I don't think anyone else saw it.)
Sorry for sounding flippant, but drinking itself soemtimes feels like a terrible and distasteful joke.
